When we are struck by a poisoned arrow, we don’t need to know who shot it, what the arrow is made from, which angle it came from, etcetera, before we should remove the arrow; when we suffer at all, we don’t need to know the minutiae of the causes and effects ~ we only need to know how to introduce the causes for non-suffering into our experience. The causes for non-suffering are the uprooting of the defilements: ignorance, greed and aversion. One way of achieving this is the dependent liberation described in the Upanisa Sutta.
The Ten Unprofitable Questions
asking these will not lead to liberation, and may drive you mad
It looks like these troublesome questions are addressed (and the simile of the poisoned arrow) in MN 63 The Cūḷamālukya Sutta, ‘The Shorter Discourse to Mālunkyāputta’. An important function of understanding this simile is that it reduces my curiosity about irrelevant metaphysics. This means I suppose that I can stamp some of my doubts as 🟠 inconsequential or extraneous, not relevant to the goal.